The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Face detection has been a subject of research and development for the past twenty years. Many approaches have been developed in order to obtain real-time robust face detection.
Document JP2005 242582 describes a face detection method and device for face detection capable of automatically building a flesh colour model.
The document entitled “An adaptive Multiple Model Approach for Fast Content-Based Skin detection in On-Line Videos”, by Khan, Stottinger and Kampel, proposes a method of skin detection in on-line video that uses a static skin colour model.
In the case of mobile phones, the solutions typically still require the use of either dedicated hardware or strong Central Processing Unit (CPU) capabilities, which may typically be found only on high-end feature phones or smart phones.
There is a need for face detection algorithms requiring a low CPU capability and without dedicated hardware, and, thus, being applicable on a low-cost mobile platform. Such algorithms may be based on skin tone detection, using the chromatic composition of images to perform a real-time face detection.
Embodiments of the invention, however, are also applicable in devices other than low-cost mobile devices, e.g. medium or high cost, cameras, non-mobile devices, etc.